district, features discreet waiters, wraparound mu- rals, and the magisterially puckish Bobby Short and his eight-piece orchestra. + Across the hall, in Be- melmans Bar, the Loston Harris trio is in attendance. IRIDIUM 1650 Broadway, at 51st St. (582-2121)- Through Nov. 17: The Hank Jones trio. Some fifty years into an unassuming yet brilliant career, the pianist has become a contemporary version of his early model, Teddy Wilson: each silken phrase is guaranteed to be perfect in shape and diction. The saxophonist Joe Lovano, a dazzling maverick player with a deep re- spect for the jazz tradition, sits in here. Mondays be- long to the electric-guitar innovator Les Paul. JOE1S PUB 425 Lafayette St. (539-8777)-Nov. 15: A present- day ironist with a prewar (First World War, that is) heart, the guitarist, vocalist, and composer Matt Mu- nisteri leads the delightfut lightly swinging chamber jazz quintet Brock Mumford. Munisteri's own time- warped tunes sit perfectly well alongside vintage work by Willard Robison, Hoagy Carmichael, and even, in the case of the band's nifty take on "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," Bob Dylan. JAZZ STANDARD 116 E. 27th St. (576-2232)-Through Nov. 17: The Avishai Cohen International Vamp Band. To judge from his work with Chick Corea's Origin band or his trio, Cohen may be the most exciting \ \ , at eighteen, and then, at twenty-seven, jilted the neoclassic ideal for a lusty Romanticism à la Dela- croix, whom he followed to North Africa. Then he died young-his first bad career move. Soon after, the Paris Commune of 1871 destroyed his most fa- mous public murals, and he slipped into obscurity. Unfortunately, he seems to have deserved the posthumous downgrade-his sultry harem girls dashing chevaliers, and pouty-lipped society sitters are agreeable to look at and unchallenging to con- template. No wonder he received so many gov- ernment commissions. Through Jan. 5. + "The Prints ofVija Celmins." Through Dec. 29. + Rich- ard Avedon, the only photographer to be played by Fred Astaire in a Hollywood musical ("Funny Face," from 1957), returns to the site of his 1978 retrospective. The hundred and eighty portraits, dating from the forties (an anonymous Sicilian boy in a state of barely suppressed mania) to last year (Harold Bloom with his eyes closed, radiating lassitude), make up a sort of idiosyncratic Ameri- can Who"s Who. Poets, painters, drifters, and po- liticos stand simply and stare into the lens. With Avedon's blank white background behind them, there's nowhere to hide, and the result is an inti- macy that's both confrontational and preternatu- rally delicate. Backlight creeps around the edges of heads; by contrast, facial features darken, and niches and wrinkles seem triple-etched. Avedon's \ - - " . . . argument, and judgment seem a matter of course. Don't miss this. Through Jan. 6. + "The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection" presents unrealized architecture projects conceived mostly in the sixties and seventies, as modernism's heroic programs for urban engineering were giv- ing way to the skeptical pastiche of postmod- ernism. The Gilman collection focusses on designs by collaboratives for experimental architecture (the Metabolists in Japan, Archigram in Britain, and Superstudio in Italy) as well as designs by such mavericks as Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, and Aldo Rossi. The playful, hallucinatory sec- tions, plans, and renderings offer blueprints for a "Blade Runner" -esque world sometimes chillingly like our own. Through Jan. 6. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, 10 to 5, and Friday evenings until 7:45.) GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM Fifth Ave. at 89th St. (423-3500)-Hollywood disaster flick meets Renaissance fresco (think "The Poseidon Adventure" with art direction by Fra Angelico) in "Going Forth by Day," Bill Viola's vi- sually striking five-channel video piece commis- sioned by a German bank for the Guggenheim Berlin. In one projection, an eclectic procession traipses through a light-dappled forest (the pan- oramic image evokes old-fashioned CinemaS cope ). r.......... " - " o Anthony Caro turns items from a London junk shop into six figures on horseback and one in a chariot, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. new bassist since Christian McBride. With his own ensembles, Cohen-an Israeli-goes multicul- tural, mixing international rhythms and textures with urban jazz. Dining. VILLAGE VANGUARD 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. (255-4037)- Through Nov. 17: Clark Terry may love to point out that "the golden years suck," but illness and the pass- ing of time haven't stilled this octogenarian's musical passions. The incisive trumpeter and flugelhornist brings wit and heart onto a stage, taking uS back to a time when art and entertainment freely mingled. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra holds sway on Mondays. ART MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES METROPOLITAN MUSEUM Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (879-5500)-Théodore Chassériau (1819-56) was an unqualified success in his own lifetime. He was apprenticed to Ingres at age twelve, won his first medal in a Paris Salon 18 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2002 look is largely a matter of extreme values, but the secret of his superbright whites and velvety blacks is that they reinvent grays-as something rare, fugitive, and cherishable. Through Jan. 5. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 9:30 to 5:30, and Fri- day and Saturday evenings until 9.) MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (MOMA QNS) 33rd St. at Queens Blvd., Long Island City (708- 9480)-"Drawing Now: Eight Propositions," a trailblazing show by curator Laura Hoptman, sets the MOMA seal of approval on twenty-six youngish international artists working in the me- dium that's been the bedrock of visual art since Lascaux. Hoptman's "propositions" identify cur- rent modes of drawing, including illustration, decoration, fashion, architectural and scientific drafting, and comics. The show suggests a forge of styles, in which artists hammer out new links between craft, discipline, and worldly import. Some-John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, Neo Rauch, Ugo Rondinone-are farther along than others, but nearly all convey the exhilaration of being onto something. For the first time in quite a while at a museum group show, exacting comparison, In an adjacent scene, water gushes from the win- dows and doors of a pristine building façade. Death and resurrection figure elsewhere in the ac- tion, as Viola tackles Big Themes. The work was conceived before the events of September 11 th, and the portent of disaster is uncanny, if you can handle the smugly pious tone. Through Jan. 12. (Open Sundays through Wednesdays, 9 to 6; Fri- days and Saturdays, 9 to 8.) WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART Madison Ave. at 75th St. (570-3676)-Two inde- pendent installations bv Lorna Simpson continue her long-standing exploration of race. "Cameos and Appearances" (2002) presents irregular grids of photographs in which oval portraits of two hip-looking African-Americans-a man with styl- ish glasses and a woman with a delicate nose stud-are interspersed with text citing racial ste- reotypes from literature and popular culture. The sleek pair could be culled from a Gap ad, but with 8 captions like "Femmes Arabes en Voyage" or "Blacula," their aspect changes subtly. Mean- while the video installati.on "31" tracks a young black woman across thIrty-one screens, repre- Q